


Trophy

by whimseyrhodes



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen, Hunting, Major Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:32:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimseyrhodes/pseuds/whimseyrhodes





	1. Chapter 1

In the back of his mind he could hear the urgent insistence that told him to ‘wake up, wake up now!’ His body, however, would not respond. Somehow he knew he was in a panel van, and had been there for some time. He wasn’t sure exactly how long, but the thirst in his throat told him it had been for more than a few hours. Fragments of memory assaulted his brain; a bar at night, a fight, a blinding pain in his head, then nothing until now.

  
He could hear big metal doors somewhere close starting to roll open, and then hands grasping his t-shirt. They pulled at him, flinging his body harshly from the bed of the van onto the hard ground.

  
He blacked out for a moment, then distantly felt himself dragged on his stomach by his manacled ankles across pavement, his cheek being lacerated by the concrete before his head thumped from hard surface onto softer grass. They dragged him a bit further, then grabbed him by his jeans and t-shirt again and hoisted him onto the back of what felt like an ATV. Ropes were lashed around his shoulders and waist to secure him in place, his legs hanging over the edge, and the vehicle lurched into motion. His head banged roughly onto the hard metal surface and then he lost even that little awareness.

oooOOOooo

“Rise and shine, little rabbit!!” The sing-song voice didn’t match the boot that thudded into Eliot’s ribs as he was jerked from darkness. “Rise and shine before I shoot you in the head, you little jackass!”

  
Hearing the rising anger in the voice, he gingerly opened his eyes to find himself lying on his side, staring up at three men with camouflage clothing on and holding long hunting rifles. They were in a lightly wooded ravine, with the sun hammering down.

  
“…w….what..?” he stammered, trying to get his brain to start firing on all cylinders. Eliot realized he was handcuffed wrist and ankle and nearly naked, wearing only his jeans.

  
One of his captors towered over him in the hot sunshine, grinning, a cigarette hanging from his lips. The two others had backed off and now stood twenty yards away by two ATVs.

  
“Well, see here, Little Rabbit, we’re on a huntin’ trip,” the man closest to him said as he crouched down closer to Eliot, although never making the mistake of getting too close. “There are all kinds of hunting trips a man can go on, and I found me some ‘clients’ who would pay a lot more money for a really special hunt, rather than one with just grizzlies, or big cats, or stuff like that. See, there’s some who want their targets to be able to think, to strategize, not just run. I spent the better part of a month finding and catching you in my little trap, and now, Little Rabbit, you are going to be their fifth trophy!”

  
Chills ran up Eliot’s back as he realized he was the prey in an exotic safari, even though he was obviously still in the western USA. He looked at the man in front of him, who apparently enjoyed his captive’s predicament as he puffed on his cigarette.

  
“Now, the way this works, we give you a two hour head start, then we track you. If you can make it to civilization, you win. If you don’t…..” He let the sentence fall.

  
“How the hell can it be a fair chase if I’m handcuffed?” Eliot growled.

  
“Oh yeah, there is that. Heh, almost forgot.” The man took out a handcuff key from his pocket and dangled it in front of Eliot’s face before flinging it off into the distance behind him. “Go fetch.”

  
With that he rose and sauntered back to his companions. They got onto the two ATV’s and started the engines.

  
“You got two hours, Rabbit! Better hurry!!”

  
Eliot could only stare at the retreating dust in shock, disbelief clearly written across his handsome face.

  
He didn’t let his shock delay him for more than a few seconds though, knowing that he would need every possible moment to get a jump on the hunters. Forcing himself into a sitting position, he looked in the direction Cigarette Man had thrown the key. It was a small hope that he would find it, but if he didn’t, he was lost before he even began because there was absolutely no way he could evade them with his ankles cuffed. He couldn’t see anything, so he rolled over a few times and sat up and looked again. Three times he did this, and then the blinding sun that he had cursed for the heat gave in and winked off of the tiny silver key.

  
Eliot had to roll over nearly a dozen more times before he got to the key, and finally he had it in his grasp. Closing his eyes to concentrate, he slid the key into the lock and turned, opening the cuff. In moments he had released the cuffs and started to toss them away. Thinking better of it, he locked them onto his belt loop and put the key into his pocket.

  
Looking at the shadows on the ground, he noted that it was around noon, and with no idea where he was and no way to find a direction, he simply turned in the opposite direction the ATVs went and headed off at a strong, ground eating lope.

oooOOOooo

Although he wanted nothing more than to keep running, Eliot knew that somehow he had to not only outrun his trackers, he had to elude them as well. So he began to veer off course, backtrack, and lay a myriad of false trails to confuse his true path. He hated the time it took to obfuscate his path, but he knew that a straight shot on ATVs was a lot faster than a straight shot on two legs. There would be no chance for him to run fast enough.

  
Figuring that the hunters would head off in one direction until out of sight, and then try to outflank him by circling around as he headed off in the exact opposite direction, Eliot changed his course slightly to one side. By the time the sun fell enough to tell east from west, he figured he was heading roughly southwest. The land began to change from grassy to rocky, which was both a help and a hindrance. The rocks would make tracking him harder as long as he was careful not to disturb them too much. However, it was also rougher on his bare feet, which were actually feeling pretty good while he ran in the soft grasses of the more open fields between the wooded tree lines. He had felt safe running in the open area because they had told him he had a two hour head start, but he hadn’t been counting on it, which was why he zigged and zagged unpredictably. Now that he was in a rockier area, he used it to his advantage as much as he could, jumping from boulder to boulder when he was sure they wouldn’t roll from their spots and give him away. After about ten minutes of this, he decided that his two hours were probably up, and he should get into better cover. A more heavily forested area rose up to his right, so he carefully and swiftly worked his way over to the trees and melted into the underbrush.

oooOOOooo

“Hardison, have you found anything?” Nate was visibly upset and pacing back and forth behind his desk.

  
“Nothin’, Nate. No activity on his credit cards, no John Does at any nearby hospitals or morgues, his vehicle is still where he left it.” Alec replied, fingers moving rapidly over the keys of his computer as he frantically tried to find Eliot’s whereabouts.

  
It had been a day and a half since the Leverage crew had seen Eliot, and normally they wouldn’t have worried. However, a job had been scheduled for the previous evening, and when Eliot had failed to show, the rest of the team had made the difficult decision to back out. It hadn’t been a very important one and could be rescheduled for later, but the fact that the Retrieval Specialist hadn’t showed was very unlike him.

  
In the hours after they returned to their offices, they had realized that Eliot was missing. They had been able to trace him from the offices the afternoon before to his home, then to a local bar, after which they lost his trail.

  
“Keep working,” was all that Nathan replied as he looked out the window into the rapidly falling dusk.

oooOOOooo

Further out in that dusk, Eliot continued to head in what he hoped was a generally southerly direction. The forest had begun as fairly level ground, but the further he traveled, the hillier it became. Every once in a while he was able to see the night sky, and the stars shone brighter here than in the city. He found the North Star and kept his back to it, heading the opposite direction.

  
He had been traveling constantly for hours without stopping, trying to get as far as he could before his strength started to fail. With the growing darkness, however, he realized that no matter how brightly the stars shone in the sky, he soon wouldn’t be able see well enough to continue without the very real danger of injuring himself, and that he could not risk. He had hiked over a few slopes that day that gradually became more like cliffs, threatening his footing on many occasions and if he fell, the injuries would take him out of the game.

  
He hadn’t seen or heard anything from his pursuers since they left him in the valley, and he was unsure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. It would be good if they had lost his trail, but if they had some other way of tracking him, like a GPS locator or something, it would be bad. He was pretty sure though that they hadn’t implanted something like that. Otherwise, what fun was the hunt?

  
Reluctantly, he decided to search for a place to rest, hoping that the hunters would rest as well, and didn’t have night vision goggles. In case they did though, he decided it would be a good idea to hide in an unlikely spot. Before true night fell, he found a place he liked. Climbing like a monkey, he reached a tall fork in a large tree and wedged himself into it, gathering a few branches closely to himself to break the distinctly human shape of his shadow. Then, he slept.

oooOOOooo

Not only were the stars brighter at night, the birds were louder in the morning. A LOT louder, Eliot decided as a particularly enthusiastic songbird trilled a melody nearly right in his ear. Thankfully he wasn’t too startled to fall from his perch. Taking precious time to scout the clearing under the tree, as well as the surrounding forest he could see in the early light, he decided it was safe to descend. Aches and bruises made themselves known quite clearly as he dropped the final few feet to the ground. Sleeping in a tree was definitely something he was going to remove from his ‘things to do’ list.

  
Feeling the muscles in his legs complain he spared himself a moment to stretch. Unfortunately, it also made him aware of the sunburn on his back from the previous day.

  
It was early enough in the dawn that the sun hadn’t yet burned off the morning dew that clung to the leaves and grass. Eliot’s throat was so dry. He lowered his mouth to the forest leaves that gathered dew and licked at them, trying to get as much moisture as he could, but it wasn’t much. He had to find a stream or some source of water today or his odds would drop severely. He picked up a pebble from the ground, brushed it off and put it in his mouth. Rolling it around and sucking on it would produce a little saliva.

  
Noting the sun’s orientation, he put it to his left shoulder and resumed his journey.

oooOOOooo

After hiking up and down half a dozen hills and covering about eight miles in his estimation, Eliot reached the edge of the current forest and looked out on a field that was about two miles across. He sat on a small rise, resting for a few minutes and trying to figure out if he should keep to the trees or risk crossing the open area and into the mountains beyond. He had almost decided to stay in the forest when a glimmer near the far edge met his eyes, and the decision was made for him.

  
Water.

  
He had to go. Water was his survival, and with no sign of the hunters for almost a full day, he had to take the chance.

  
Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck quiver and his instincts scream at his foolishness, he left the relative safety of the woods and shot out into the open. He ran hunched over, trying to keep as low as possible and changed course unpredictably, slowing and speeding up in case they were trying to catch a bead on him.

  
Finally he reached the small watering hole. Falling to his knees at the edge, he shoved his hand in and drank a few handfuls before he realized his surroundings. On the far side of the small pond was a skeleton of a raccoon, and nearby, the decaying carcass of a fox. He looked closer and saw the absence of animal tracks, and then he noticed the oily sheen of the stagnant water itself.

  
_Shit!_

  
He stumbled to his feet and staggered a few steps, then knelt again and shoved his finger into the back of his throat, inducing his gag reflex. He vomited up most of the bad water and meager remainders of his last, far away meal. He forced himself to vomit again, knowing that, as weak as he was becoming, he couldn’t afford to let any possible poisons remain if he could help it. It was a lose/lose situation, however. When he was finished, he covered it with dirt and erased his tracks at the edge of the pond.

  
Nauseous, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, wrinkling his nose at the horrible taste in his mouth. The water pit was close to the edge of the forest opposite the one he had fled from, and he crossed into the dubious cover of the trees and looked for a plant, any plant, with leaves to wipe his tongue off with.

  
Frustrated for dropping his guard, he breathed deeply and forced himself into a lope again, giving up hiding his tracks, choosing instead the advantage of merely placing distance between himself and the hunters on his trail.

oooOOOooo

Running.

  
Climbing.

  
Falling.

  
Running.

  
Eliot stumbled over a branch and fell to his knees. His bare feet were torn and bleeding, his knees ached, and the palms of his hands were painfully abraded from slamming into the ground time after time. He was leaving a trail even a blind man could follow, and he knew it. He only hoped he had been cunning enough at the beginning to completely throw off his pursuers.

  
Night was falling again, and with it, his strength. He had been without water for two days, and the last day had been spent in exhausting flight. Cursing himself for a quitter, he forced himself to his feet, knowing he had to find somewhere to hide for the night. He wobbled forward and almost instantly fell again, this time into a well hidden depression at the base of a large tree. Backtracking on hands and knees for a few yards to cover the blood from his feet, he swept the scuff marks off his trail and retreated back to the tree and its secret nest. He used a few pine boughs and a pile of leaves to cover himself, then finally relaxed a little and slipped into a light doze.

  
Hours later he was awakened by his body shaking. The temperature had dropped drastically, and even the blistering heat from his burned back couldn’t keep him warm. Shivering, he gathered more leaves and pine boughs closer to himself, hoping the added foliage would insulate him a little. He clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering, and wrapped his arms tightly around his chest, exhaustion finally dropping him into a fitful sleep.

  
Dawn rose a short time later, but Eliot was unaware. A fever had risen from a combination of lack of water, sunburn, and the bad water he had consumed the day before. His body shook with chills, just to give way to burning heat as he writhed weakly, trying to find a cooler respite, then to tremble again with cold.

  
When Eliot next awoke, hours had passed and it was approaching midday. He was still feverish, but the worst seemed to have passed, if only for the moment. He was distressed to discover that half of the day was already gone, his hard fought for lead dwindling.

  
But almost as soon as it came, his distress changed to elation. He could hear a river.

  
Driving himself to his feet again, he followed the sound of the water. He was annoyed at himself for not hearing it the previous evening, but he refused to dwell on it. That was in the past, and to dwell on it might cloud his thinking and he need to be thinking clearly, especially now. He figured that since this was the first reliable water source he had encountered, the others might have forgone tracking him and merely advanced ahead of him to set a trap.  
With that in mind, he crept slowly through the brush, fighting with himself against charging into the water. He forced himself to wait, hiding behind thick ferns, scanning the opposite bank for signs of the hunters. He lay on his stomach for at least 20 minutes, watching, when he finally decided to go to the water. He hadn’t heard nor seen the others since they had left him, and he was too thirsty to wait any longer. Eliot crept slowly forward on elbows and knees toward the rushing current, keeping mostly behind a large boulder that sat half submerged in the river.

  
Finally reaching the life sustaining liquid, he plunged his entire head into the river and drank a huge swallow. He almost moaned in pleasure as the water ran past his cracked lips and down his dry throat. Lifting his head above the water to breathe again, he splashed some of it onto his blistered back, sighing at the soothing feeling. Waiting a few moments to make sure his stomach would handle its new contents without rebelling; he again drank, this time longer and more slowly.

  
As he raised his head again, he heard a rifle shot ring out from across the river. At almost the same time, a bullet smashed into the boulder beside him, sending shards of granite flying. A few of the rock chips flew into Eliot’s cheek and neck, and one particularly large one embedded itself into his right shoulder. Too startled to react to the pain, he reacted to the danger instead, throwing himself backward into the ferns again and rolling to his feet to race behind a tree as more gunshots erupted.


	2. Chapter 2

As he raised his head again, he heard a rifle shot ring out from across the river. At almost the same time, a bullet smashed into the boulder beside him, sending shards of granite flying. A few of the rock chips flew into Eliot’s cheek and neck, and one particularly large one embedded itself into his right shoulder. Too startled to react to the pain, he reacted to the danger instead, throwing himself backward into the ferns again and rolling to his feet to race behind a tree as more gunshots erupted.

He plastered his back to the tree as bullets slapped into the surrounding vegetation. He waited until the shots stopped, straining to hear what the men were yelling at each other.

The consensus was that they had jumped the gun, and should have waited for him to cross the river before firing, and now they would have to cross the river themselves. Eliot was torn. He wanted to stick to the river and follow it downstream, knowing that sooner or later it would lead him to a town, but the hunters were also aware of that fact. If he stayed on that side of the river, he would only be allowing them to get closer to him. 

Therefore, he decided to go upstream, and then cross, so that he would again be on the opposite side of the river.

Smiling slightly as he heard the one who had called him ‘Little Rabbit’ change his nickname into ‘Sly Rabbit’, Eliot backed further into the brush and headed west against the current.

A few yards later he heard the somewhat clumsy hunters thrash their way across the wide but shallow river. They made so much noise that Eliot wasn’t concerned with them hearing his slight movements, but he stayed watchful anyway. When he heard them continue downstream, he slipped out from under the bush he was hiding in and carefully moved upstream, looking for a narrower or more concealed place to cross. He stopped a couple of times to drink more water as he searched; watching downstream carefully as he knelt on the bank, and finally found the place he was looking for. Narrower and somewhat concealed by old deadfall and overhanging branches, he slid into the waist deep water and crouched down to his chin, pushing himself along using the driftwood that was now caught by underwater rocks. Alert for shifting rocks underwater, he probed each step with his toes before committing. Stuck in the river was about the last place he wanted to be when there were bloodthirsty hunters intent on his head.

At last he reached the other side and dragged himself onto the brushy shore. Still crawling, he slithered into the woods before standing up. Having drunk nearly enough water to burst before exiting the river, he cursed the bastards for not at least leaving him a canteen.

oooOOOooo

“Hardison.” Nathan said. He was asking for an update on Eliot’s whereabouts, but Alec had nothing he could give his boss. He searched his monitors for anything useful, but there was no new information anywhere.

“I’m sorry, Nate. There’s nothing. Nothing at all. Still no activity. I’ve been listening to the police bands and they haven’t come across anything either.” 

Parker walked into the room, clicking the screens to another channel. 

“Have you guys been watching the weather?”

Nathan exploded. “No! We have not been watching the weather! We’ve been looking for our missing teammate!” 

Unfazed, the blond blinked. “There’s a huge storm coming down the mountains, bringing a lot of moisture from the coast,” she looked pointedly at them as she continued. “Rains are increasing, and flash flood warnings are up all over the state.”

They looked out the windows at the dark roiling clouds, heavy with rain and bursting with unspent energy. Somehow they knew Eliot was out there somewhere in the middle of it.

oooOOOooo

Eliot noticed the forest light becoming dimmer, but at first he attributed it to the denseness of the vegetation. When he heard the low growl of thunder he knew he was wrong.

“Great,” he grumbled. “Why couldn’t that have happened yesterday, when I was dying of thirst!?!?”

He continued across the hills as the rain started to fall. At first, the gentle drops soothed him, the relative peacefulness a balm to his nerves. But after a few hours the rain increased in intensity, until it was falling in hard sheets, stinging the raw and sensitive skin of his back. His visibility decreased to a few yards in front of himself, and the wind was blowing harder too. Trees started to whip their branches into his face, slashing cruelly into his forearms as he braced them in front of his eyes. Flashes of lightening blinded him briefly as they streaked through the sky. Knowing that the hunters had to have sought shelter, he decided to do the same before he lost his sense of direction and ended up blundering into their path.

At the base of a pass worn into the mountainside by deer and other woodland creatures, he heard an ominous rumbling. Looking up he was horrified to see a great wall of mud and debris churning down the pass, heading straight for him. Before he could even leap out of the way, it caught him and tossed him to the ground like a ragdoll, his head striking the unforgiving surface of a rock. He was unconscious before he came to rest, nearly buried under the rubble.


	3. Chapter 3

The rain drummed on the rocks and plants and buildings, feeding the earth with the moisture it needed for all of its creatures to survive. Lightening flashed across the horizon continuously, emblazoning itself on the retinas of any who were unlucky enough to be looking when it struck. 

The four despondent agents of the office building stood high in their metal tower, straining to see their missing member, yet knowing it was futile.

oooOOOooo

Rain pummeled the dirt and leaves, mixing it up into a muddy mess that seeped into the hurriedly erected tent of the hunters. Cursing the elusiveness of their prey, they sat huddled in the tiny temporary dwelling, hunched over the small kerosene heater through the night and plotting their next move when the sun returned.

oooOOOooo

Rain mixed with mud mixed with leaves slid down the embankment of the cliff side, gathering at the base around the shivering body of the man lying facedown there. His long dark hair, usually so straight and silken, was tangled and covered with muck, twigs and blood. His upper back was red and blistered with sunburn, but now covered with more of the brown silt; his muscular arms, limp and half buried, were covered with scratches and lacerations under their earthen covering. The rest of his lean body laid buried under mounds of yet more mud, silt and rocks, digging into his flesh painfully, but he couldn’t feel it.

Eliot’s eyes moved restlessly under his eyelids as he struggled toward consciousness. Groaning, he awakened, all of the muscles in his body screaming at him. He gingerly tested his limbs before moving them, tensing his throbbing muscles one by one to make sure he hadn’t broken anything. Thank God for small favors. After assuring himself that nothing was broken, he tried to get up, but he was stuck from below his ribs to his feet. He pushed and clawed at the mud until he had freed himself to the waist, and then pulled again, straining his arms to get enough leverage to free himself. He cried out as his back tensed painfully, the stress on his back and abdominal muscles almost making him stop and regroup until he felt a slight give in the mud.

Slowly, so slowly, the earth finally began to loosen its hold on him, and he slid out of his muddy prison, gasping like a fish on land. 

Lightening soared across the sky again, and the bright flash illuminated him as he struggled to stand, his drenched body glistening with the reflected light. He felt like some swamp creature creeping out of the muddy depths, and he started to giggle.

Stopping himself, he was worried that he was becoming delirious from fever or concussion. Either way that was dangerous, as it meant he was slowly losing control.

The wind began to blow again and he halfway wished he had stayed buried, as it had been at least sheltered, if not warmer. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t have been able to avoid another mudslide if one came at him again. He shivered. 

In pain, exhausted, freezing, and confused, Eliot didn’t know what to do. Finally he decided to just keep going, hoping that the exertion of walking and hiking would start to warm him up.

oooOOOooo

Dawn came and the rain ceased. Birds began to sing, and the animals ventured curiously out of their dens to see what the nightly rain had brought. 

Thieves in the city sat back down at their computers and tried to resume abandoned searches, and hunters packed their tent and tried to pick up their prey’s trail as well.

The object of the massive search wandered listlessly through the trees, stumbling, falling, and rising to continue his journey, almost on autopilot. 

Eliot was so tired. It was an effort just to put one foot in front of the other. His thoughts wandered, only to be wrenched back into line by his fiercely stubborn will. At times he worried that he had gotten turned around and was heading in the wrong direction, but then he would catch a glimpse of the sun and reorient himself. He was never far off course, and when he did have to make course adjustments, they were minute.

He had stumbled to the ground by an age felled tree and was crouched, winded, trying to get his breathing under control when he heard the noise.

A crackling in the brush to his left. It wasn’t very close, a few hundred yards, maybe. He crouched lower, slowly gathering his legs underneath himself, the adrenaline shooting through his body in the classic fight-or-flight response. There was no question which he would choose.

He waited with the patience of a rattlesnake, his eyes fixed on the quivering brush until he saw what was behind it.

One of the hunters. Dammit! One must have stayed on the far side of the river and gone to ground as the two others clambered across, fooling him into thinking that all three had crossed.

‘Oh well, his own mistake,’ Eliot thought as he gathered himself to jump.

The hunter didn’t have time to raise his gun before Eliot was on top of him, having launched himself into a tackle. The gun flew off to the side as the two men fell to the ground, Eliot managing to land on top. They had barely landed when Eliot began to pummel the man with his fists. The hunter got in a lucky punch to Eliot’s kidney, followed by a strike to the chin which threw the smaller man off. Making a fatal mistake, the hunter left his back open as he bent over to rise to his feet, and Eliot sprang onto his back, wrapping his arms firmly around the man’s neck in a deadly chokehold. The large man fell back onto Eliot, but even though his breath was knocked out of him he didn’t loosen his hold. Their legs scrabbled in the dirt, each fighting for supremacy, when the large hunter finally went slack.

Eliot kept his hold for a few minutes, making sure the man was well and truly dead before he released the body and kicked it off of his legs, panting. He lay on the ground with the dead man at his feet, arms spread to open his lungs to fullest capacity and concentrated on slowing and deepening his breathing.

When he had finally had it under control, he rolled to his side and labored to his feet. The adrenalin rush was wearing off quickly.

Normally Eliot hated guns, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to use them. Checking to make sure the rifle was loaded; he went back to the body to scavenge anything that would be of use. Although larger than Eliot, the big man had smaller feet, so the boots were no good. Undeterred, he stripped the vest from the man, which held extra ammunition for the rifle and apparently a handgun as well, a short range radio, space blanket, a pack of matches, a small canteen and Thank God! Two candy bars! If he’d known how much booty this hunter carried, he mused, he should have sought him out long before. Even though hindsight was 20/20 and all that, it had no place in a man’s head during a situation, only afterward (if he lived), so he ruthlessly shoved it out of his mind and went back to concentrating fully on the task at hand.

He wolfed one of the chocolate bars down as he took the man’s boot knife and strapped it to his calf, then removed his belt and knife and threaded it through his own jeans, switching the handcuffs from a loop to the belt itself. There was a Sig Sauer in the man’s shoulder holster, which he stuffed into the back of his waistband. His shirt he twisted and tied around his waist. His sunburn would barely tolerate the vest on his back, and since he was mostly in the shade now, the shirt would be too much to bother wearing. In case he needed bandages in the future however, it would come in handy.  
Having taken all that he could use from the corpse, Eliot continued walking, the rifle held loosely in his hands. 

He had traveled perhaps two more miles when the radio suddenly squawked at him.

“Dalton, do you read me?” the voice on the other end asked. Eliot recognized it as Cigarette Man. 

“Hey Dalton, if’n you kin hear me, William and I are gonna head back south to the radios and hook up with David, ok?”

With a wicked grin, Eliot keyed the mike. “Sorry, boys, Dalton doesn’t want to play anymore.”

“What the hell? Who is this?!?”

“You mean you forgot about me already?” he asked with wounded pride.

“You bastard, Rabbit! What did you do to Dalton?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” And he turned the radio off. Now knowing that there was a base of operations somewhere to the south, his spirits lifted and he broke into another easy lope, hoping to reach this base before the two others.

At the next rise he crouched and scanned the horizon carefully. He could just make out the single thin radio antenna rising above the tops of the trees. If he hadn’t known it was there, he would have easily missed it. Adjusting his trek toward the antenna, he trotted swiftly down the lightly covered hillside into the last valley between him and communication. 

oooOOOooo

Nathan hovered behind Alec as he sat at his computer. Nathan never hovered.

“I’m just trying to keep all out lines of communication open,” Hardison said. “He’s out there somewhere. Somehow, someway he’ll get a message through to us.”

Nathan continued to hover.

oooOOOooo

Lying in the tall brush on the ridge, Eliot stayed as still as a sniper, sucking on the second candy bar. A half mile in front of him, at the base of the hill sat three buildings that looked like oversized fish houses in the center of a large clearing. They were about 12x12 feet square, the one in the center looked about 18 foot on one side. The roofs and walls were plywood, and they were set flat on the ground, with no foundation blocks. A deep blue SUV sat on the far side of the clearing, about another quarter of a mile away on the other side of a deep gully with a simple wooden bridge across it.

The radio antenna was on the roof of the center building, as well as two satellite dishes. This is the building he was watching with avid interest. Soon, the fourth hunter, “David”, sauntered from the center building to the one on the right, which Eliot figured it was an outhouse. David looked to be only about 20-24 years old and still wet behind the ears. There was no evidence that he was on alert for the “Bastard Rabbit” who had a radio and now knew about their base, nor did he even carry his rifle along with him to the privy, although he did have a handgun in a hip holster. Sloppy, sloppy.

Taking the chance to scurry down the hill, Eliot made it to the back of the large shack before David returned from his ‘business’.

The young man reentered the central building and sat down on a creaky chair. Eliot heard his boots thump onto a desk, then riffling papers that indicated a magazine of some sort. Silently, he crept to the last building and slipped inside. The fool even left the door open for him!

This building was a sleeping shack. Eliot took the pack of matches from the vest pocket and lit one. Wedging it carefully between the other matches, he set it on one of the messy beds and ran for the door, making sure the coast was clear before he bolted back to the safety behind the center building. He heard a soft snap and sizzle as the match burned down and lit its fellows on fire, then he saw smoke as the bedding caught fire. A few minutes later and “Captain Oblivious” in the radio hut finally noticed the smoke, swore loudly as he fell off his chair and ran from the building.

Eliot scampered from the other corner into the building and raced inside to the nearest terminal. There were two, and as the second one booted up he logged onto the first, waiting for that one to load as he logged onto the second. Multitasking and opening up two communications, each to different emergency address to Leverage, Inc., he furiously activated the webcams. His fingers flew through the passwords and routing prompts, and nearly wept for joy as the cameras popped up and he saw the two anxious faces of Alec and Nathan looking back at him.

“No time for explanations Nate! Alec, get a trace on these locations fast and get my ass out of here!” Eliot whispered urgently. “And don’t talk, they might hear.”

He dared to look up at the doorway, but was relieved that there was no one there yet.

“It’s an exotic hunt, with me as the target. Names are Dalton, William and David, don’t know the fourth, don’t have last names. Caught me at a bar fight, said they’d been tracking me a month. We’re about seven miles south of a river, lots of hills and woods,” Eliot rattled off in a rush. He knew he had to get as much information out as he could, and he could see Nate taking frantic notes. “Bring medical and food, haven’t eaten in days and….SHIT!”

He sensed movement in the doorway too late. He lunged to the side as bullets ripped through one of the monitors but he wasn’t fast enough to dodge them all. One tore through his left thigh and he screamed in pain, his careful dive turning into an crumpled landing behind two tall stacks of boxes. In the background he could hear Parker yelling “We’ve got the trace! We’re on the way!”

The long haired man could tell David was scared out of his wits, but he kept firing. Eliot jumped up and heaved his weight at the stacks of boxes and they toppled over heavily onto the boy. He was dazed, and didn’t have time to rally before Eliot fell on him and his rock hard fist slammed into his jaw, easily knocking him out cold. Rolling off the boy, he moaned as he untied the extra shirt from around his waist and tried not to move his left leg much as he wrapped it around the bleeding limb. He noticed that David’s belt was a fashion belt rather than a working one, which meant it had circular rivets that ran along the entire length instead of only up a few inches. He tugged the belt off of the boy’s waist and slipped it over the shirt, running the end through the buckle. He clenched the end in his teeth as he pulled, as much to pull it as tight as he could while fastening the buckle with his hands as to keep himself from screaming again.

He felt the blood roaring in his ears and his vision dimmed, and he couldn’t stop himself from slumping backwards onto the dirt floor. 

oooOOOooo

Nathan snapped orders at the others as they all scrambled to gather supplies. Nate started the van as Sophie clambered in with the extensive medical kits and food, Parker tossed in bags of weapons and climbed in, and Hardison came last with his computer cases.

Within minutes they were racing toward the preliminary co-ordinates Alec had traced. One of the terminals was still intact that they could receive information through, but the last thing they had heard was Eliot’s scream of pain and a crash, and nothing else.

Nevertheless, Alec continued talking, trying to get some kind of response, hoping that Eliot was still alive.

oooOOOooo

“Eliot. Eliot. Hey Eliot, man! I’m talkin’ at you, answer me, dammit!”

The voice cut through the fog that lay heavily in Eliot’s mind. Moaning, he rolled to his side and maneuvered himself into a sitting position.  
“Eliot! Answer me!” The voice was insistent.

“….what?” he croaked through cracked and bleeding lips.

“Hey man, you ok?” He knew that voice, it was Hardison.

“Uh, yeah. Mostly, I think,” his voice was a little stronger. Getting up onto one knee and using the wall for support he finally made it to his feet and limped over to the remaining monitor. Leaning heavily on his hands he peered at the screen. Alec was there, and he could see Parker and Sophie’s worried faces crowded behind him.

“Report,” Nathan’s strong but concerned voice floated from the speaker. He couldn’t see his boss, but knew he must be driving. They really were on the way.

“Um, the younger one, David, got me in the leg with a lucky shot. Through and through. Bound it up, but I passed out for a bit. ‘M getting a little dizzy.”

“Anything else?”

“Bad sunburn, I’m dehydrated and had a fever, might have a concussion, haven’t eaten since they took me except two chocolate bars,” he ran down the list clinically.

The dizziness took hold and the room swayed, making him fall to his knees with a muted exclamation. He only saved himself from a faceplant by grabbing onto the desk with both hands.

“Ok….maybe more than a little dizzy,” he admitted breathlessly as he rested his head on the table.

“Are you secure?”

No, he wasn’t, and he desperately wanted to be. His shoulders shook with fatigue.

“Eliot, are you secure?” Nathan was insistent.

“….no,” he whispered as he fell to the floor, unconscious.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, I apologize. I thought there would be only three chapters before the epilogue, but somehow this fic grabbed me by the short hairs and took over into its own nasty little life. Seriously. Who does that?
> 
> Oh yeah, and I have no idea what city they’re based out of, so I took it as kind of a southern west coast city. If I’m wrong, just pretend they’re at a secondary office, or something. Come on, it’s a plotless piece of whumpage, go with the flow here. (A/N: I wrote this after seeing only two Leverage episodes)
> 
> Fight scenes are really hard to choreograph! A note, there is some fairly graphic violence here, esp. at the end, so be warned.

“Eliot. Are you secure?” Nathan asked a second time, fearing the answer. When the whispered, “…no,” came back he knew Eliot was in serious danger. Hearing his young thief topple to the ground made Nate’s heart beat faster as he edged the van further past the speed limit, determined to get to him as fast as he could.

“Hardison!”

“He looked worse, Nate,” the hacker answered. “Looks like he lost a fair amount of blood with that shot, and he’s shutting down fast.”

“Now tell me something I want to hear!” Nate’s anger barely covered up his fear that they wouldn’t reach Eliot in time.

“We should be at the coordinates in about 15 minutes.”

“That’s more like it.”

“Uh-oh,” Parker said as she watched the screen.

“What? What uh-oh? What’s uh-oh?”

Hardison and the two women were silent as they watched the drama on the screen. The table had been knocked over and the webcam had skittered across the floor, but miraculously still filmed the events that were happening in the radio hut.

oooOOOooo

As Eliot lay senseless on the floor, the last two hunters strode in and took in the scene in front of them. Barreling towards his prey, one of them threw the table into the wall, destroying the monitor and sending the little webcam scuttling for its little techno life. Although battered and on its side, it still filmed everything in front of it, including the larger and stronger looking of the two grabbing Eliot by the neck of the vest and dragging him outside into the clearing. His head lolled back, his hair brushing the ground and his arms limp at his sides. He seemed totally unaware. Then the man’s foot came back as he strode towards the open area and Eliot’s arms whipped up and grabbed it, causing the big man to fall to the ground with a grunt. Rolling and spinning at the same time, the long haired man leaped up, balancing on the balls of his feet while keeping both men in his sights. 

“You son of a bitchin’ pain in the ass!” Cigarette Man lunged toward him and Eliot jumped back, landing in a fighting crouch with the majority of his weight on his right leg, using his wounded one mainly for balance.

The big man rose and put his arm out to stop the other one.

“This one looks like he can fight, Dallas. I want to see just what he’s made of, see if he can fight as good as me,” William boasted. If he had thought it through, he would have figured out quite easily that although he was wounded and had been starved in the woods for four days, his would-be opponent was much tougher than he looked and could be meaner and deadlier than a wolverine.

The one called Dallas scowled, but backed off.

William made a great show of putting his rifle by the door and indicated to Cigarette Man to do the same, then pulled out his handgun from the small of his back and put that down too, raising his hands like he was going to surrender. As he was doing that, Eliot studied the way he moved, trying to calculate how fast he was, his reach, and anything else that would give him any advantage.

The hunter-turned-fighter started to bounce around on the balls of his feet, sliding to one side to land in a crouch, and put his hands out in front of himself in a classic martial arts ‘start’ pose. The trouble for that guy, Eliot thought, was that he looked like he knew a little of this, a little of that, and probably learned them from watching TV and then practicing with his drunken buddies. He didn’t want to assume that however, because he could just be faking it and then surprise him with some simple maneuver that he normally would easily avoid.

Eliot let William make the first few moves, ducking back or blocking when he had to, still attempting to judge the other’s abilities while also conserving his strength and trying not to make it look like he was stalling. In one of the big man’s rushes he grabbed Eliot’s vest, intending to pull him closer for a punch, but the cunning thief simply spun in a circle, angling his arms so the vest slipped off and danced back, leaving it hanging in his opponent’s hand. 

The more William moved, the more confident Eliot felt. If he hadn’t been wounded, he would have been able to mop up with this opponent even blindfolded and cuffed to a post. Taking his sorry condition into account however, he knew that the faster he took him out the better. With that in mind, he let the cocky fighter come in closer and blocked a right cross by sweeping his left hand behind the wrist and pushing it down and followed it with a right cross of his own and a vicious back chop into the trapezius muscle at the base of the neck.

Howling at the pain and shock of his arm suddenly going numb, the big man brought a furious left around to catch Eliot in the ribs, but Eliot knew it was coming and blocked with a sweep of his right arm, backed up and, ignoring the pain, slammed his right foot hard into the man’s guts. 

William hunched over and Eliot closed, hoping to knock him out with one good blow. Advancing, he was unable to check his stride enough as the hunter suddenly straightened up and lashed out.

Sunlight glinted on the short blade that flashed toward his body. Making the split decision to keep going rather than back off, he hoped he would be able to take the knife in a non-vital enough area so he could end the fight quickly rather than try to avoid it and probably get cut anyway, and then have to fight even longer while finding another weakness to exploit.

He grunted as he felt the knife slide in under his ribs on his right side. Warmth immediately started to trickle down his side, but he ignored it. Because of his injured right arm William had grabbed the blade in his left hand, was obviously not used to it and therefore, luckily for Eliot, his aim was poor.  

Unluckily for William, Eliot’s aim was not so poor. He drove one hammer-like fist into the side of the other man’s head and William went down like a stone.

oooOOOooo

Alec, Parker and Sophie had been relaying the fight to Nate as he drove, and all cheered as Eliot’s opponent went down so decisively.

Nathan smiled as the others slapped high-fives.

Sophie’s gasp made his heart jump into his throat.

‘Please, nothing more, not now,’ he thought as he turned onto the dirt track that would lead to the clearing.

The rest of the team could not do anything as they watched the last hunter advance on Eliot from behind, gun in hand.

They were just pulling up beside the dark SUV on the far side of the clearing, and were able to watch from two angles at once – from the webcam’s perspective, and out the front windshield – as Eliot turned with his hands raised to face the gun pointed at his chest.

oooOOOooo

Cigarette Man made the mistake of coming too close to Eliot with the gun, but this time he wasn’t going to tell him that. He waited, half listening to Dallas’ ranting, until the gun was about a foot away from him.

With lightening speed, he slapped his open hands toward each other, except his right hand struck Dallas’ wrist and the left slapped the gun, forcing his foe to drop the gun as his wrist buckled. At the same time he shifted his weight to his right leg and lifted his left knee up, and continuing his right hand down he grasped the hilt of the knife that was strapped to his left leg. Instantly reversing to a backhanded grip and twisting his wrist up, he swung his arm back and up and violently slit the last hunter’s neck from ear to ear. 

Panting heavily, he stood for a few seconds as the body thudded to the ground, then backed up a few steps and dropped to his knees, arms hanging limply at his sides. He let his head fall back and his chest heaved as he sucked in air greedily; sweat mingling with the blood that trickled into the waistband of his jeans.

oooOOOooo

His teammates sat frozen in the van as they watched Eliot kill so ruthlessly. They had known that there was a violent streak in the silent, usually restrained man, but they now knew how brutal and murderous it could be.

When they saw him slump to the ground, though, they all acted as one as they grabbed gear and raced out of the van and sprinted as fast as they could to his side.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know what/how much medical knowledge they all have, so again guys, just go with my flow.

His teammates sat frozen in the van as they watched Eliot kill so ruthlessly. They had known that there was a violent streak in the silent, usually restrained man, but they now knew how brutal and murderous it could be.

When they saw him slump to the ground, though, they all acted as one as they grabbed gear and raced out of the van and sprinted as fast as they could to his side.

oooOOOooo

It was Parker who stopped their headlong flight by slowing and holding her arms out, blocking their paths.

“Hold up, everyone,” she started.

“There’s no time!” Nathan barked.

She shoved her hand into his chest and snarled, “If you don’t want to end up shish kebob’d on the pointy end of a knife, you’ll listen to me! He’s in a zone right now; we’ve got to make him realize that we’re on his side before we can even touch him.”

The rest of them stopped pushing forward as the truth dawned on them. In his present state, Eliot would kill them all without a second’s thought.

Parker slowly walked up to the wounded man, staying directly in his sight with her hands open and out to the side. Softly talking to him the whole time, she knelt in front of him, making sure not to make any sudden moves or speak sharply. The beast she saw in his eyes terrified her. She felt like she was a juicy, raw T-bone steak and he was a starving lion. His nostrils were flaring as he panted, blood poured out of his nose and joined with that from his cracked and split lips, dripping off his chin. He made little chuffing growls with every labored exhalation, as if trying to scare her away.

She didn’t want to admit it was working.

Slowly, his left hand came up and his bloody fingertips gently touched her cheek, as if he couldn’t believe she was actually real and right in front of him. Gradually, the beast in Eliot’s eyes gave way, and when he blinked, all she saw was the unendurable exhaustion of the last four days. He blinked again, and his eyes went glassy and unfocused as they rolled up into his head and he slumped forward into her arms.

Nate and Hardison rushed forward to help support his weight as Sophie spread a thick blanket on the ground. Together they eased him back onto it, cradling his neck and head. The badly blistering sunburn they could do nothing about for the moment, so they concentrated on his other wounds.

Sophie poured water onto a cloth and used it to gently wipe the blood from his face, and worked at cleaning the gash on his temple from the mudslide the night before. Alec did the same with the knife wound under his ribs, putting pressure on it to stem the blood flow. Nate unbuckled the belt around Eliot’s thigh and gently removed the wrapped dressing there, thankful Eliot had tied it so well that even during the fight it hadn’t been torn open. He busied himself with cleaning it as well as he could, then put gauze pads on it and re-wrapped it.

Parker had just inserted an IV with glucose into Eliot’s left wrist and opened the drip to maximum when he started to stir.

“….wha…’r you doin’….?” he rasped, his grey-blue eyes half open.

“Easy, Eliot,” Sophie soothed, “You’re ok. We’ll get you to a doctor in no time.”

“….hospital? No, no……no ‘ospital…..”

“You haven’t got a choice, Eliot,” Nate said, his tone brooked no argument. “We’ve got it taken care of, just relax.”

Eliot couldn’t argue if he wanted to, he was so damned tired, and if he let himself acknowledge it, in too much pain as well. He let his teammates (Teammates. When had he let them become teammates?) care for his wounds as he drifted close to darkness. He knew somehow that they would watch his back and protect him now, when he couldn’t do it for himself.

oooOOOooo

When they had stabilized him to the best of their ability, they knelt down, two on each side of Eliot’s body. Sliding their hands and arms gently under him, they lifted him as they stood, and carefully made their way back to the van with Parker holding the IV bag aloft. This was a much safer, and less painful, way to transport him the short distance than each taking a corner of the blanket he was lying on. This way, his entire frame was supported with as little movement as possible.

Eliot felt their hands slide under his body, surprised at how tenderly they touched him. He had always been the strong one, beating up his enemies, smacking heads and throwing punches. Now that he was helpless, he was mildly shocked at the trust he was beginning to develop towards his team. It was a rare thing for him, one that he would have to think about when he had the energy. Right now, he struggled just to stay somewhat coherent.

He felt them lift his body into the van and gently lay him down on a soft mattress of blankets they had piled up on the floor. Thirst was beginning to gnaw at him, and one of them must have seen him trying to wet his lips with non-existent saliva. His head was lifted and a canteen put to his lips. He opened his mouth and the wonderfully cool water slid into his mouth and down his dry throat. He moaned in pleasure, then growled when it was taken away.

“Easy, Eliot, not too much. Can’t have you throwing it back up.”

He shuddered, remembering the way his belly had twisted when he drank that filthy water. No, he definitely didn’t want to throw up either.

Someone must have thought he was cold and drew a blanket over him, tucking it close at his shoulders and hips. Now that he was covered, his body realized just how cold he really was, and started shivering. Another blanket was added.

Wow. Someone, probably Sophie, was even smoothing something on his sore and bleeding lips. It was cool and moist, and felt really, really good. He twitched his mouth up in a little smile, and felt a hand on his brow. He didn’t even bother trying to open his eyes.

He could hear Nate and Alec talking in the front seats, but Eliot didn’t pay too much attention. For the first time in too many days, he was warm, relatively comfortable as long as he didn’t move, and the most wonderful thing of all was that he didn’t have to move. He had others looking out for his well-being, and he didn’t have to be the strong one this time. Pondering that, he let himself slip into a light doze.

oooOOOooo

Eliot awakened from his dozing more slowly than he would have liked and his muscles tensed. His defenses were worn down to nothing, and his instincts were frayed. Realizing belatedly that he was safe with his team, he relaxed slightly.

The van was slowing down, turning, and parking. The sun had set, and the darkness was nearly complete when Nate turned off the headlights. Dim light shone into the van windows, and wasn’t much brighter when they opened the doors. His teammates lifted him up like last time, and as they exited the van, Eliot looked around a little. The light was extremely dim for an Emergency Room, he thought. He heard soft talking, and a door was held open and they carried him down a hallway.

“Put him here,” someone said.

He felt himself laid onto an examination table and opened his eyes again. What he saw confused him. He was obviously in some kind of medical environment, but it was also as obviously not a hospital. 

“This is Dr. Daniels, he’s an old, ah, acquaintance of mine,” Sophie was at his side and introduced the man next to her. “He’s agreed to help us out.”  
Just then a dog barked in the background, and another answered it.

“A vet?? You brought me to a fucking vet??” Eliot growled.

“Eliot, calm down. Dr. Daniels used to be a fine Internist at Marybrook Hospital, until a scandal caused him to be fired, and his reputation tarnished. Not his fault, by the way. He’s still a doctor. And a good one, at that,” she replied as explanation.

The wounded man relaxed back onto the bed. It was just as well. A hospital would have brought many questions and as long as he didn’t need anything as complicated as, say, a lobotomy, this was as good a plan as any.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t stay alert. He instructed the good doctor that he wanted verbal communication before he did anything, and he was to outline everything as he did it. Eliot watched as Dr. Daniels replaced the now empty bag of glucose with another, adding a syringe of antibiotic into it and adjusting the flow.

Nathan and the others relayed his injuries to the doctor and answered his few questions as he carefully removed the bandages from his temple, thigh, and abdomen. Inspecting the puncture under his ribs more closely, he stated that he wanted to x-ray it to make sure there were no damaged internal organs. After doing so and finding the film to be to his satisfaction, he returned to Eliot’s side.

He injected the site with a local anesthetic after being told sternly by the young thief that he was not to sedate him in any way, and prepared a warm saline bath while he waited for it to take effect. When satisfied, he meticulously cleaned the site and removed all debris with a tweezers, and followed by stitching up muscle, then the outer flesh. Placing a topical antibiotic and sterile gauze on it, he taped it on and deemed that one finished.

After cutting off the tattered remnants of Eliot’s jeans, he repeated this on the wounds on his thigh, and then the one on his temple. Eliot didn’t even mind that he was lying on the table clad in only his black boxer-briefs in front of the entire team. He was still focused on the doctor’s movements. When Daniels was done, he snapped his gloves off with a sigh.

“Well, that’s done. We can clean him up and put some ointment on that burn on his back, then we’ll get him settled for the night,” the doctor said. Parker and Sophie took the cloths Dr. Daniels handed to them and started to wash off the rest of the crusted on mud and blood that still caked most of Eliot’s lean body. Nathan and Alec followed the doctor to a back room to help him set up a bed for the exhausted man.

Eliot closed his eyes and drifted, the feel of the warm cloths gently sliding over his arms, legs and chest felt wonderful. He thought the two women were talking, but he didn’t concentrate on the words, only their hushed voices. He vaguely noticed as someone, he thought it was Nate, lifted him cautiously by the shoulders so the women could wash his back as he rested against a strong solid chest. He heard the doctor moving up to the side and instinctively tensed. The arm around his shoulders squeezed, and he relaxed.

Blessed relief on his back as the doctor spread a cooling and numbing salve on his skin, then covered it with a light cloth. 

“Let’s lift him like you did when you brought him in, and get him settled in the back room,” Daniels said. The four teammates did just that, and followed the vet down the hall into another room. They laid him on a soft cot as the doctor hung the IV and checked it to make sure there were no kinks in the tubing. Covering him with a sheet and soft blanket, everyone but Nate left the room.

“You’re safe now, Eliot,” Nathan said, his hand resting firmly on Eliot’s forehead. “One of us will be here at all times. Sleep, and we’ll be back to check on you later.”

Eliot obeyed, and was finally able to let down his guard. He slept.

He didn’t even notice when a few hours later a warm form gently curled up next to him.

oooOOOooo

Voices intruded into his comfortable slumber.

“I can’t find Harry!” the distressed voice said.

“Don’t worry, he’ll turn up. He always does.” Eliot recognized that one. Dr. Daniels. He slept again.

oooOOOooo

Eliot woke slightly as the door slowly slid open.

A chuckle escaped his visitor. Confused, Eliot roused himself a bit more, and discovered a very warm purring cat curled up on the pillow next to his head, a paw stretched territorially across his neck. He smiled and didn’t move, content to let the sleeping feline remain where it was.

“So that’s where Harry went,” Dr. Daniels said. “He’s kind of the clinic cat. The owners died in a car accident while we were kenneling him, and we never got around to taking him to a shelter. We’ve tried keeping him in his kennel at night, but he somehow gets out whenever he wants to. That’s why the owners named him after Houdini.”

Eliot was entertained by the explanation, and the fact that the vet was comfortable around him made him decide that the doctor was all right in his book.

“I checked in on you a few hours ago, and your fluid levels are better, but I’m going to keep you on a glucose drip for a little longer, along with another round of antibiotics. Your wounds are starting to heal pretty well, but that sunburn was pretty bad. There’s still a bit of infection there; your white blood count is high, and you’re running a fever, but hopefully the antibiotics will get rid of that. How’s the pain? Any nausea?”

Eliot replied negatively.

“All right. I’d like to keep you here for a few more days. You’re in a back room that the staff knows not to enter, and your friends have all been here in shifts. They’re acting as interns and temp workers, and they’ve been back to check on you too. If you need anything, there’s a remote on the stand beside you. Alec has it set to ring to our pagers if you push it.”

As he turned to go, Eliot said, “Thanks, doc.”

He nodded, then left the room. Eliot nuzzled his cheek into the warm cat’s fur, setting off another round of furious purring.


	6. Chapter 6

It had been nearly a week since Eliot had left the clinic, and things were slowly getting back to normal. He attended the meetings and gave his input, and was content for his role in the previously postponed job to be relegated to the background, knowing that his partners were looking out for him. 

That he did so without a fuss though, set off a tiny alarm bell in the back of Nathan’s mind.

oooOOOooo

On the evening after the last job Nathan walked down the hall to the far office. He had some paperwork Eliot needed to finish, and was concerned at the pallor he had seen on the young thief’s face when he arrived that morning. Eliot had also been favoring his right shoulder, and Nate had seen him wince more than once when he moved it unexpectedly.

Receiving no answer to his knock, Nate opened the door. Eliot was sitting in his chair with his head resting on his desk, his left arm lying loosely above it. Hoping the younger man was just napping, he nevertheless heeded the alarm bell screeching in his head and went around the desk, laying his right hand on the back of Eliot’s sweaty neck.

“Good Lord, you’re burning up!” he exclaimed.

Easing his other arm under Eliot’s chest and supporting his neck with his right hand, he lifted him back to sit against the tall backrest of the chair as Eliot moaned.

“…’s hot,” Eliot mumbled.

“Your fever’s up, we’ve gotta get you cooled off,” Nathan said as he started to unbutton the long sleeved shirt that Eliot was wearing. He was mildly curious to find that half of the buttons were already undone, but as he eased it off Eliot’s shoulders, he gasped at the angry swelling just under his right collarbone. A small gash in the center that had scabbed over was bleeding heavily, and dark red lines radiated outward from it. He accidentally jarred Eliot’s right arm as he was pushing the sleeve down, and Eliot choked on a scream, his back arching and his left fist sweeping up to push against Nate’s chest.

Nate slammed his hand on the intercom button.

“Hardison, Parker, Sophie! Eliot’s office! NOW!”

He was carefully sliding Eliot to the floor when Alec came rushing in. Hardly missing a beat, he put his hands under Eliot’s head and shoulders as Nathan set the wounded man’s legs and hips onto the rug and gently laid him flat.

Eliot’s head tossed back and forth, his legs shifted restlessly and his left hand moved toward the wound on his shoulder.

“….out, get it out….gotta…” he mumbled.

Then Nathan realized what Eliot had in his fist. A Swiss army knife.

“Eliot, what are you doing?” he asked, his hands on either side of the young man’s face.

Bleary eyes blinked back at him, the pain evident.

“….s….somethin’s still in there, Nate…..gotta get, get it out,” he groaned between clenched teeth.

Nathan looked at the wound, and at the incision that Eliot had started, and realized that he was right. Pus was mixing with the blood that flowed from the cut, and there was a bulge under the scab.

“We’ll get an ambulance, Eliot. Alec, call….” he started to say but was interrupted by Eliot’s cry.

“No! Get it out now! Now! Get it out, get it out, get it out!” he screamed.

Just then Sophie and Parker came running around the corner and gasped as they saw Eliot writhing on the floor, Alec and Nathan hunched over him.

“Sophie! Get me some tweezers or something. Parker, get towels, cloths for bandages! Alec,” Nathan said as the two women rushed to retrieve what he had ordered, “get me a bottle of whiskey or brandy, strong as you can find.”

The tall man headed for the door to find the alcohol and Nathan tried to soothe the young man, stroking his wet, tangled hair back from his face as Eliot tried to control his panting.

oooOOOooo

Ever since he had been released from the clinic, Eliot had the nagging feeling that something was not right. The low grade fever that had been plaguing him refused to abate, and he couldn’t hold down much except water. Whenever he tried to eat anything, he just ended up hunched over the toilet, heaving until he thought his head would explode, so he eventually gave up and just sipped water as much as he could. As a result, he became tired more easily, and he knew by the concerned looks on his teammates faces that the bags under his eyes were growing worse.

On top of that, the ache in his shoulder had increased into torture, and every time he moved it a lightning bolt of pain arced through his body. He favored it as much as he could, but when he had reflexively caught the door to keep it from banging in his face this morning, his knees nearly buckled and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from yelling out. Shaking, sweating, and profoundly thankful that he was at home and not at the office, he leaned against the doorframe until he could breathe, swept his unruly hair back from his face, and continued out the door.

When the job was completed that afternoon, he nearly groaned with relief, except that to do so would have attracted unwanted attention. His partners were already hovering like mother hens, and Eliot just wanted to rest.

He made it to his dim, quiet office without much interruption, and sank into his leather chair. Intending to detail a file he had forgotten, he was caught unaware by a rush of nausea. Instantly his entire body was burning hot, and he could feel that his face was flushed and sweating. He leaned forward, intending to put his head down when the pain in his shoulder became unbearable. Finally he realized what was wrong. Dr. Daniels had taken x-rays of his chest, but had been concerned mainly with the knife wound under his ribs. He had missed the seriousness of the wound in his shoulder, dismissing it as a superficial cut. Thinking back, he remembered the first rifle shot at the river, when it had exploded into the boulder next to him. He remembered a flash of fire in his shoulder, but it had soon been forgotten. He knew then, that there was a shard still embedded in his flesh.

Reaching into his back jeans pocket with his left hand, he brought out his ever-present Swiss army knife and opened it. Fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, he managed to get about half of them open, and gave up on the rest.

Taking a deep breath, he looked at the angry swelling under his clavicle. Red lines of poison ran outward from it, snaking their way towards his heart. His thoughts cloudy, he never considered calling for help; he knew what had to be done, and he would do it himself, like he always had.

He laid the tip of the knife into the center of the swelling and pressed hard, breaking the skin and slicing into the wound. The agony burned down his arm as he fought not to scream. The edges of his vision darkened and before he could stop himself, his head crashed down onto the desk, sending him into oblivion.

The next thing Eliot was aware of was that he was lying on his back in the middle of his office. Someone was gently smoothing his hair and talking. He could barely hear the voice through the rushing in his ears, but then he realized that it was Nathan. Surprised that the older man would show such compassion towards him, he gave up trying to understand and instead directed his energy to controlling the stabbing agony in his shoulder and tried to breathe.

oooOOOooo

Alec returned with the whisky first but before he could give it to Nathan, Eliot’s hand shot out and grabbed it. He gulped down a few swallows, the liquor burning the back of his throat as he fought to keep it from coming back up.

Nathan took the knife and the tweezers that Sophie handed to him and doused them with the alcohol. Parker returned next, sliding to a halt beside Eliot’s prone form, and handed the towels to Nathan with a question in her eyes. He said nothing, just began to tuck a few around Eliot’s shoulder, and placed others on his chest. Unbuckling his belt, he slid it out of the loops and doubled it up. Bending down, he gently pried Eliot’s mouth open and placed the leather between his teeth. As Eliot took the bit he looked into Nathan’s eyes and nodded.

Shifting his position, Nathan knelt over Eliot, straddling his waist and kneeling gently on Eliot’s right forearm to keep it still. Alec joined in, holding the younger man’s left arm and shoulder down, and placing his right hand on Eliot’s forehead to keep him from tossing. Parker held the remaining towels, ready to press them into the wound when needed. Eliot’s teeth were clenched tightly into the leather belt, his nostrils flaring as he gasped for air.

Wordlessly, Nathan took the knife and placed the tip just as Eliot had done before Sophie realized what was happening.

“What are you doing?!? You’re not a surgeon Nathan! You could hurt him!” she yelled.

“It needs to come out before....”

“What does??” she interrupted.

“Whatever is in there that’s causing him so much agony! Now if you’re not going to help, then stay the hell back!” he growled at her.

Surprised at his sudden anger, she backed off and he continued.

As he slid the knife into the swelling, blood and pus burst out, covering Eliot’s shoulder. Parker swiftly wiped it away as Nate continued to probe. Eliot twisted, trying to get away from the excruciating pain. Alec held his head from thrashing back and forth as tears leaked from his eyes and slid down into his long hair.

“I can see it! Parker, tweezers!” He held his hand out and she slapped the tweezers into his palm like a seasoned nurse. Angling the instrument into the gap, Nathan slid it past the end of the shard and pinched it closed, locking the teeth onto the offending object. Steadily he eased it out as Eliot’s body arched against him, shocked to see the huge 3 inch long sliver of granite. Eliot opened his mouth and screamed in agony as the shard was finally pulled out of his chest. 

Hating to do it, but knowing he had to, Nathan pushed on the swelling around the wound, forcing the infection out. Eliot moaned as the pressure increased, then eased as the pus was pushed out. Parker once again wiped the ugly liquid and blood off his chest, and before anyone could stop him, Eliot had grabbed the bottle of whiskey and liberally doused the wound with it. 

His body convulsed, his hand clenched so hard around the bottle that it broke. His head slammed backwards onto the floor as they all held him down, Sophie finally joining them and holding onto his legs as they jerked and twitched. 

Eliot was unconscious long before his body stopped shivering. Alec grabbed a blanket from the couch in his office to cover Eliot’s shaking legs as Nathan and Parker bandaged his shoulder and flushed the lacerated hand while Sophie called Dr. Daniels.

oooOOOooo

Eliot lay on the soft leather chaise lounge, Parker sitting beside him with his hand on a large towel in her lap. She was wearing a magnifying glass over her eyes and diligently working to remove all of the glass chips in his palm. Thankfully he had not grabbed the neck of the bottle, so when it shattered, much of the glass had fallen to the ground and had not been driven more deeply into his skin. The lacerations were not deep, although they continued to bleed profusely. Sophie sat next to Parker with a bowl of water and cloths, flushing the wounds when Parker directed.

Nathan was at the desk deep in conversation with Dr. Daniels, taking copious notes. Finally satisfied, he hung up and turned to address the rest.

“Well, it looks like we actually did the right thing. Eliot had the right idea that the shard needed to come out. His method, though less than surgical, was effective. The dark red lines were indicative of blood poisoning, and Alec is on the way to the clinic right now to pick up more antibiotics. We’ll keep him here rather than move him to the clinic again, and Dr. Daniels has offered to make a house call should we need him to. Until then, we’ll just monitor his condition and keep him comfortable.”

The two women sighed in relief. As long as Eliot didn’t manage to damage himself further, it seemed like he would finally be on the mend for good.

Eliot heard his prognosis and decided that he would let his friends (Friends? When had he let that happen?) nurse him back to health.

He closed his eyes.


End file.
